OPINION: 'To my friend Hédi, the Holocaust survivor, it is not only the breaking of a promise, but one of many symptoms of Europe's collective forgetfulness about the dangers of allowing the far right into positions of power,' writes JulieLindahl.
Election helpers are seen as they count the last votes in the municipality of Stockholm at the Stockholm City Hall on September 14, 2022. Never before has a Swedish government relied on the support of the anti-immigration and nationalist Sweden Democrats, the big winners of the vote.
Hédi Fried meets for lunch with Ulf Kristersson, the leader of Sweden's Moderate Party, at her home in 2018. For someone like me, who has spent decades trying to understand how her grandparents, among millions of other Germans, could have become part of a political force that eventually ushered fascists into the “fine room” of German politics, it all sounds nerve-rackingly familiar.
While, to date, the Sweden Democrats have not been given any ministerial posts in the new government, early on in the negotiations, their leader, Jimmie Åkesson, was adamant that there would be. So far, among other muscular roles, the Sweden Democrats have been given the chairmanship of parliament’s foreign affairs committee .